My original post was bounced by the moderator
because he thought I had made a mistake in my
numbers. I don't think so, but, of course, I do
make mistakes and my knowledge is less than
perfect. He invited me to resubmit if I thought
it was correct, which may create some confusion
since I think Mr. Venzke already responded to me
due to the cross-post on the election-methods
list. If anyone wants to read my original post,
which had some other comments not quoted below,
it is in the election-methods archive.
Cross-posting between a moderated and an
unmoderated list can be problematic....
At 04:38 PM 9/9/2005, Kevin Venzke wrote:
--- Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit :
> At 10:52 AM 9/9/2005, Kevin Venzke wrote:
> >49 A
> >24 B
> >27 C>B
> >
> >A could be elected, for instance with a plurality tiebreaker.
[and I replied]
> As I understand Copeland, truncated votes, as shown, would be
> considered as equal ratings below the rated candidate(s), so the
> complete description of the votes would be
> 49: A>B=C
> 24: B>C>A
> 27: C>B>A
[Mr. Venzke continued:]
No, it would be:
49 A>B=C
12 B>A>C
12 B>C>A
27 C>B>A
This is the margins treatment (that is, pretend that the B voters split half
and half on A vs. C).
This does not seem to be how Copeland is counted.
I'd appreciate a reference if it is. If the B
voters are split, why not also the C voters?
I did not see in descriptions of the Copeland
method an explicit description of how truncation
is handled. However, there is an example
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method --
see under Defeat Strength) which clearly
considers unranked candidates as rated below all ranked candidates.
Mr. Venzke's method is interesting, but I don't
see it described anywhere that Copeland is mentioned.
So I continued:
> With Copeland, the number of pairwise victories are counted first.
> This would be
>
> A: 0
> B: 75
> C: 78
The moderator, I think, thought this was in
error. After all, A had 49% of the vote, and
first preference for B was only 24% and C only
27%. But if we consider truncated votes as
ranking all ranked candidates above all unranked
candidates (which is how it seems it is done),
51% of the voters ranked A last. There are no pairwise victories for A.
>
> C is likewise the winner. What is this example supposed to show?
Copeland returns a three-way tie. By the way, did you not have a problem with
C supposedly winning?? C receives acknowledgment from only 27% of the voters!
That depends. B>C is an "acknowledgement" of C if
it implies that C>A. If it implies that half of
the B>C voters rank C>A, as it seems Mr. Venzke
would analyze the result, then 39% of the voters
would prefer C. And the way I counted it, 51% preferred C.
Do I have a problem with C winning? Yes. But C is
the Condorcet winner, if truncations are counted
as I have stated. Counting them as Mr. Venzke has
counted them seems unlikely to be what the voters
would have intended. (However, the rules should
be explicit; but if half the B voters actually
preferred A to C as Mr. Venzke would have it, they should have so voted!)
The example shows that Copeland with a plurality tie-breaker can elect
candidate A, even when more than half of the voters preferred B to A and
didn't prefer A to anybody.
Why does Mr. Venzke split the B votes, but
apparently not the C votes? They are the same,
both truncated, leaving A out. I'd restate the
election with both split, but since I don't have
time and I think the splitting is probably an error, I'm not doing it.
In my opinion, this is a majority rule issue.
It seems to me that Mr. Venzke is counting
Copeland truncated votes one way in the example
and then criticizing it based on an alternate
count (i.e., the one I actually used). If
Copeland is counted the way he has claimed, then
he'd be right, there would be a problem.
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